The Photo
by Aspergian Mind
Summary: What went through Kyle Reese's mind when John Connor gave him a memento of a his past romance that has also yet to be his future as well? Confusion that human kind has never experienced. REVISED. A vast improvement.


THE PHOTO

By: The Aspergian Mind

**(REVISED)**

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything in the Terminator franchise, but I, like others on Fanfiction, can still take that universe and explore the characters further from what we've seen in them in the movies.

**A/N(Sometime ago):**This was a short story I wrote unfinished somewhere back in 2007. I kept it in my personal folder all that time. And since I started being a member of FanFiction, I decided to post it in. In fact I wrote it to begin with since I decided to join the club.

In terms of plot, I just set it like there was only the first "**TERMINATOR**" out. I wanted to see how it all started before the future and the plot seems to go to the 'alternating timeline' side with Terminator 3 and worse with the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Was that SCC a necessary fill-in-the-blank? I never watched it so I don't know.

**A/N(01/01/10):** I was given a final assignment in my expository writing class in community college. A mixed mode essay. Since I realized this had many modes in itself, cause & effect, descriptive, narrative, argument, I decided to make this a final assignment.

And when I gave it another read and...

Oh, GOD!!

I couldn't believe I've written something this bad. Half the sentences were shockingly incoherent; I can't make out what even I'm suppose to say. Description fell short in a lot of places, it felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities. Overall: What the Hell was I thinking when I writing and typing this?!?!?!

Well, I went and rewritten and revised it. Also got to mention that reforming the paragraphs really does help with pacing of the story by better grouping the sentences. Plotwise it's the same, but the coherence is given so much more clearity, just by reworking what I needed to say in my sentences, you'd see it in a different light.

To those who've read it already. Read it again and review it and tell me if it really took a quantum leap of improvement. Though who knows, maybe next year I'll come and find errors still and give it another refurnishing.

* * *

Los Angeles. A former city among the hundreds of former others in the former United States, as well as thousands of other former cities in all former countries of the world use to be standing, until they were inevitably doomed by "Raindrops from Hell", as some called them.

The year is 2027. Counting the years creates a burden of fatigue for the length of conflict despite how small the number is to add. To measure the length in days would become a number 365 times bigger than that in years. What day it is of which month does not matter, except for those in upper command. To know when to add an addition tally to the number of years is the only thing to care about. Whether it's anybody's birthday, anniversary, or holiday which ever season doesn't do a shit of difference on making any day better, special, or different from Judgment Day. For me, Kyle Reese, having been born, living, breathing, fighting, and of course, will be dying in the global graveyard, nothing has changed it or me.

Today is some time in January. It is supposed to feel cooler, but with the nuclear ash blocking the sun, and nullifying the weather, you can not tell the difference by the similarity of the bleak charcoaled landscapes and cloudy despair in everyday.

Last week was a victory; we had taken part of the city San Antonio and killed all the soulless enemy hardware that brings death. Terminators and Hunter Killers, those who bear the name of delivering death, it's uplifting when you contradict that, make _them_ the terminated and _them _the hunted and destroyed.

Everyone's heart rose with hope, just like me, just to be sunken again when the machines counterattack, haven taken their own victory as well. All those years we have had this stalemate, though actually it's more in our disfavor. Due to the frailty of organic flesh against hard metal, it's a more delicate process on making and protecting the life of human than it is making and replacing a machine.

Only by our commander's speech and our hearts, that nourishes what humans have that robots lack, morale, have kept us going. I do not know whether to have morale as a factor that can change from being a favor to a disfavor is good, but if our hearts tells us to never die without showing that you have strength, we fight to hopefully have our next battle to be a victory that will have lasting imprint on the outcome of this war, a victory that will open us to a new future when the war is won by us.

I do not know what future we could possibly get out of this wreck, but it will be better than this. I am certain.

* * *

It is blind luck to get a medal. There is nothing left to make anything that you would give to a soldier that shows he has proved his valor, to say the most. But today, a captain from an arrived escort told me, that I'm going to get something greater and rarer than anything of what is left in this world: To meet John Connor.

John Connor, the man who had taught us to survive. To lead what was left of us so humankind will live to see the "Day of Resurrection". The man who taught us to fight, to kill those machines that have reduced us to low-life, only wanting more still to see us reduced to extinction. To meet the legend is greater than any material wealth.

I am chosen to meet John Connor says the visiting captain. I do not know why. I am not the greatest fighter with any real great accomplishments, only endured enough to make it this far into the war so far, and not sure if I will live to see the end of it.

"Endurance is just what you are blessed with. You have made it to this day." Is what the captain of the escort said. "That's what John Connor said."

What did he mean by that? True, I was part of a locally created unit in my mountain hometown in previous Arkansas, where we held off sieges from our mountain peaks. We were cutoff and by ourselves for years. What do they mean by, "making it to this day?" Am I merely being awarded for being alive?

The personal guards have given me a driven escorted. We drove all morning through the country, the towns, until reaching a certain city previously called Houston. Throughout the drive there are so many ruins of different types, from the ruined barn to the desecrated skyscrapers. But all the while, my mind was elsewhere, depicting an image of what John Connor would look like.

Downtown, in once was called Houston, there is sound of distant firing. Sounds bigger than what I dealt with before. Something that John Connor can handle. John Connor. You're about to see him face to face.

The escort pulled in front of a 10-story stone ruin with large steps in front has the words, "City Hall", engraved. It is the man who saved mankind being in there that makes this ruin different from all the others.

Inside the City Hall it still grows. The captain of the escort, led me by himself, enter what use to be a lobby, with two giant stair wells on both sides. It's actually still being used as a lobby now, there's a soldier behind the front desk doing paperwork. The captain of the escort left me here and took the stairs.

For a full minute I pondered over the building. I was born after the nukes went off, so I didn't get to see a City Hall in all of it's splendor. Though I don't doubt for this one in particular, that it was grand, holding the hundreds of officials that would of run this city. Now it's sheltering the Head of Command for the Resistance, with one man leading the whole world against a threat of annihilation.

Then I hear the footsteps from upstairs, made no other than, knowing by my heart's bursting acceleration, John Connor. I see him at the top steps looking down. All I see is the shadowed figure of him; the lighting is to his back. Him as an immense shadow from the top of the stairs, seemingly looking down on me, it all adds up to an effect that I am puny to this demi-god.

I only felt this excited when running from danger, but my heart's adrenaline felt nothing like pumping more blood to my lungs. I never felt this before. I was never that one old man, who told tall tales, like he shook hands with The President of the U.S.A. or Christian Bale or someone else famous, so how would I know what it is like to meet such people of fame?

The legend descended the stairs, boots leaving a good pound per step. But it all changed when he came in direct eye sight, face-to-face. The effect of his supremacy has vanished; he seems to be my equal now. Is there even a hint that he's less than that even?

He is a man in his forties, about my height, with many scars that showed the valor and courage that inspired us few remaining millions. But the entire face, beyond the scars, is what awes me. His eyes, his hair, everything that makes a face, looks just like mine. He seems to be an older version of me; I could relate him to my father. But there is something that makes me feel older, making me look down on him, that makes me feel like a father to his son.

Wait a minute, I am half his age. What could possibly make me feel like a father meeting his son? My fight to break free from the moment stops when our gaze is eye-to-eye that puts me back into the spell. The eyes glisten as if they were going to shed tears. And his mouth, ever so faintly, shows as if it were to become a smile.

The whole face seems to say to me, "Hello Kyle. I am happier to see you than you are amazed to see me."

And the already awkward feeling within changed to the most foreign feeling yet. I could not relate it to a feeling of danger I have experienced everyday of my life in the war or to meeting someone legendary, which I never experienced at all. It feels like an unfamiliar first encounter with mystical bond that you always had but never knew it.

He, having greater power of will than I, breaks the gaze as if waking from a happy dream, but his face now hides it as if it never happened. I wish he never broke that gaze, I need to understand what it meant, and he undoubtedly seems to know something I do not. He says that I was just the man he has been looking for and is most needed upon.

Out of one of his pockets, he gives me an old folded piece of paper. Much went through my mind during the few seconds it took to finally reach it. All that I have done for humanity and I get this from their and my leader? Is it a thing that despite its worthlessness in regular status is made valuable, just by being in possession of a legend?

John Connor says that it is for what would be of huge, burdensome, importance to what is our present and future. Sounds like he will be relying on me later. As if I'm going to be the one to ensure the future, not him. But I am thrown off completely when he says, "The past may seem imprinted on stone, but what's the past to us is yet to be others' future." And he finally concluded, while still sounding incoherent and illogical as ever. "Fates and destinies change, whether it happened already or is yet to happen."

He leaves me to return to his commanding duty, meaning I will be escorted back to my combating duty as well. His steady ascent up the steps indicates he is leaving this moment clear minded, as if unaffected, while my head is now in the clouds.

I have not looked at the paper, yet to be unfolded, for I am so busy contemplating those words from John Connor. He told me like that the past is as unwritten as the future, like it can be changed if one wanted it to. A person's future is a past to the other. This really messes with my head and the weird connection I felt from the speaker of those words does not help the slightest.

The escort drove me a large amount of the way back, but I need to walk this out. I tell them to pull over, thank them for the ride, and said I'll hike the last couple miles. I know that I would be swarmed with my friends and comrades who will ask me all sorts of things about my meeting with John Connor, so walking back is more covert and less attention drawing than an escort. And, not to mention, a lot of walking will do me good to help me think about what exactly did happen back there meeting John Connor in such a abnormal way.

The sun is in the evening now during my walk back. Pondering on my thoughts, I observe the sunset. Even if the clouds prevent the sun from mostly penitrating down to the surface, it still does it's usual paint job to them during its descent behind the horizon. I was told that sunsets were usually shades of red, orange, yellow, or even with a hint of purple that you'd see reflect on the water particles that make the clouds. It's different now. The chemicals of the weapons used pollute the entire sky so there's a inducing smog feel of seeing polluted water on the roads being placed opposite of the water, into the sky instead.

Kind of reminds me of how different it felt meeting John Connor.

Speaking of which, I decided to rid the suspense to find out what this folded paper is.

Unfolding it, I realize it's not a paper but a photo. The photo is that of a woman, just in her twenties, her brown blond hair with a sweatband, sitting in a Jeep with a German shepherd by her side. The Jeep was a shiny red. No car, you can say pretty much anything that could produce shine, would have any shine left after the nukes. This certainly must have been from before Judgment Day. Her gaze was not direct to the camera that would have taken this picture, but the power of it was still shockingly familiar.

It is the face of Sarah Connor!

This is just as big as John Connor: His mother. A deceased legend, being the bearer and teacher of the living one, who had played just as important of a role in the war. No one existing currently ever knew her when she was alive, so her face was left to the storytellers' and listeners' imagination. Her legend was spread by John Connor to those near him and those near them, until everyone is as familiar with her as we are with him.

As amazing she was to look at, her beauty was cursed as well, I feel my gaze to be forever fixed on the site before my eyes, and she is just on a piece of paper. Sigh. It is the same feeling I had with John Connor: A first encounter with a mystical bond you never knew you had.

Yet the power of seeing a photographed deceased legend is feeling more infinitely greater than when I met living, breathing John Connor in flesh and blood. Seeing a goddess of beauty would normally cause people to have a crush on her, but my heart felt more disparate, in fact completely opposite, than anybody could have a crush on. A crush starts blossoming feeling in you and grows from there. This is like a stab in the heart, like my spirit had briefly been a blossoming flower in full color so long ago, and was rotting in a void, to be reblossomed again.

Yet that indeterminate period of blooming that came before is as rotten, empty, and undead for being unfulfilled as it is sweet, wonderful for being fulfilled for spiritual eternity. I do not know how to sum it up. Feels like I had something that I lost which will come again. My soul feels old aching for renewal again. I feel like it will be greater than sin and hell to let go of that feeling. But the feeling is so confusing.

What is the reason for everything that has happened? Is this supposed to be intentional by John Connor? Is it supposed to be this tense on the opposites? Why is there the feeling of these two opposites when I never had neither of those two before? All these thoughts run through my head, I do not know how long it was, but my eyes never blinked since. This power is so mysterious and strong, I need to test the strength of it.

First test is to let go of it, destroy it, and forget it. Not to far off the road is fire-barrel, the ashes were still burning, after the refugees recently moved on. My hand and the photo are suspended over the flames. The second I held it closer, the hand trembles furiously and jerks back on an impulse that is not my own, and that was just the physical happening. In my head I hear the death-cries of millions and scream of more people yet to die, images flashing of greater death and carnage that I have ever experienced. I feel like I was going to die like the rest of them, drop dead on the spot from most intense images and noises in my head.

WHAT IS THIS?! I feel lost love that I have never had, ever, and I am now seemingly cursed by attempting to disregard this totally perplexed feeling. I need to study the photo as deep and through as possible, finding what made me, seemingly, fall in love with the photo-- No, Sarah Connor.

First feature that comes to attention were the eyes. She has the exact eyes that John Connor inherited from. At first I thought those eyes were determined, her gaze was something like she has an objective. Probably she knew of the future and is preparing her son for it when this photo was shot. Though how did she know of the future war against the machines? Did someone tell her? An odd feeling, I guess in some form of revelation, came across me like what I was just thinking was a form of irony.

I look hard for deeper detail in a faded photo, lacking there of, to see it was merely the brows that gave the expression of determination. The true feeling is hidden deeper in the eyes. They actually seem to be reflecting, from something in the past supposedly. It was sadness, and I feel like I am one of the reasons for that. Feels like I was a part of that past, hitting me like a memory rather than a hunch. Is it my past, like in reincarnation? I never considered religion, nor bothered studying, or following any spiritual beliefs. The reason could be that I had a previous carnation, but this feeling of being both full and empty is like that it may be the past chronologically but in experience terms I have yet to live it. How does that make sense?

What is it that draws me to her? Can it be love? It cannot be love. How can you know, you haven't had any deep relationship before. Love is intimacy that requires having contact with someone, and I never meet Sarah Connor. To fall in love with that woman in the photo feels like a curse if I get rid of it, yet it also feels like torture to keep it. Remain attached and I will remain obsessed with something that I already felt like I was obsessed with my whole life, when in truth I never had that obsession.

That one notion keeps repeating: I was never in that kind of love, yet it feels like I was taken away from that love for eternity. If I feel so full and empty, both of which are from my attachment to Sarah Connor, then it has to mean it will conclude as one of them. Which one will it end up being? I am full by my the most unusual emotional mixture of "love at first sight" with "my lost love", and empty by acknowledgement and logic that nothing in the world would have started the "filling" feeling. It is the feeling of fulfillment dominating over the emptiness that I feel like I could hold on to it. Guess that proves that love does conquer all. But what is the emptiness? I think emptiness is my life prior to that love. Recollecting my past, I guess it is my 'other' form of depression, other than traumatic stress, that was without source in all the years of my life massing in some form in confrontation with that power of love.

It is yet to happen, yet I feel ancient from it. A future that has yet to happen to me, yet it is in the past of time. It is the two same feelings of full and empty coming again and again. I hear a voice saying, "Accept it, no questions to ask, no second thoughts, no logical reasons. The barriers that separate our souls in the passage of time will open a small door for you, just once. Accept that and accept destiny." I do not know whether it was me having a hunch, my gut instincts, my animal instincts, or God talking to me, all I could say is I will go with it to whatever ends, I will not fight.

I accept my unfathomable soul's selection, not surrender to its mysterious wishes. I just hope in the future, answers will come to shed new light to all this. This feeling for my future, feels like a past experience.

* * *

For the untold amount number of days you would fight in a war, this is the day you would trade all days for: The last day. The battle at SkyNet's Central Control, is drawing to close now. This battle will be the ultimate example that we, the inventors, have the power to destroy the invented.

But while the battle is in our favor, bringing feelings of joy and celebration, my feelings are quite the contrary, with dread and lingering doubt.

Just weeks before these events to our final victory, we had a round of victories that led us far into enemy territory. But sinking deeper in the uncharted territory has allowed the enemy to take advantage and send its Infiltrators, the T-800s.

A single one managed to infiltrate our unit after rescue operation of civilian prisoners, and it hammered us good on its single stand. And out of all the dead soldiers, elders, wives and their children -not even my own critically damaged body- what was the greatest lost to me was the photo. I lay immobilized staring at Sarah Connor as her car, her dog, her face, her eyes incinerate into the flames.

I panicked fearing that all the torture that I felt, self-inflicted on me and probably everyone, from the first and last time I put that photo near a flame would be felt again. I said to myself then, "SkyNet, who tried to destroy humanity, you have failed, because I feel like the real destroyer of worlds."

But it didn't happen, because she still exists in more than just that photograph. She's now in my heart, and I guess that more than covers for having to remain as a picture. She is in my heart, my thoughts, and my dreams. Sarah, when I see you, you are a ghost who's happy because of me, after I made you sad because of me. Why? What did I do?

Back to the present, I am among those held back waiting in the salvaged M35 U.S. Army Truck. The Defense Grid may have been five miles from our position, but we can tell that it was gone by the ball of fire reaching for the skies. My accompanying soldiers felt disappointed, for not having part of the glory.

Then our truck's initiates on and drives us away from the battle field.

"Where are we going?" I asked insistingly. This driver has a contrary schedule.

The driver answered. "I received from Top Command to head back to the previous front. Also quoting that the tables have turned in our favor...but only currently for now."

Currently? SkyNet's defense grid is smashed, meaning that SkyNet's disconnected from command through cyberspace. All the cyborgs and machines now are under their own independent minds, which is quite substantial A.I. but inadequate and dumb still to SkyNet's leading mind. Is there back-up grid for the destroyed primary one?

Next update from Radio:

There has been one last transmission from SkyNet, for Module #7, the observatory.

Didn't we pass it during the battle? Yes, I remembered, and it was unoccupied. One position that oddly wasn't used in any line of defense. It was an isolated location, that could have been a vital area to place artillery, but wasn't, all that was there was from the scans was a bunch of supplements for Wafer-circuit terminals. It's like Terminators were preserving it, by staying away from it. Preserving? Staying away? Two words that you wouldn't fathom from a tool of destruction.

Next piece in the unraveling puzzle is said that they were preserving it and it is being occupied by two machines, a T-800, and a something called the Time-Displacement Equipment. There's still the job of finishing off the hundreds of machines running around, still as horrendous now due to their confusion of detachment of higher command, but me and my unit's objective, have to go to this observatory, to the Time-Displacement Equipment placed deep inside it, and doesn't sound so significant.

My platoon that I'm in has 23 men. It would not be too much of problem facing a lone T-800, unless it has a plan to use the Time-Displacement Equipment for zapping us into different time periods. It felt like what I just thought was suppose to be irony.

Next there's the order to make a pick-up for our leader of this operation so the events will go accordingly to plan. Must be quite a detail-oriented and long planned to have a new higher ranking officer to lead us. So they knew the mystery behind that building. The truck stops for the pick-up. There was just a jeep and three men, and one is...Oh, God, not again.

John Connor. I'm going to be lead by the origin of the most loving, hating, torturing, soothing, both opposite feelings combined in one? Not again. All the confusing connections with him of no origin are going to return again. I took a glance, and it was all it took to re-trigger the feeling. Not just being a man of legend, that others felt, but for being a confusing fusion of emotional complexity. I use my hand to mask the side of my face that would be looking at him. Bad enough to have proximity with each other, intimacy -talking to him- would explode my brain. Why? Haven't I gone through enough confusion to surrender, unresolved, to a picture of his mother?

My mind goes whirling again with questions, theories, bringing no real sense of conformity just more divergence. It makes the travel up the hill to the observatory go real fast when your mind is elsewhere.

Truck stops. Red light blinks for departure. Good thing I was in the back so I can have Connor with his back to me rather than his face. Stop thinking about him; start thinking of the mission, the hostile surroundings.

We exited the vehicle two-by-two at a steady pace; so far there's been not fire discharge from the enemy. There are charcoaled rocks and ruins all around, the same exact surroundings that you'll find everywhere else in the world. Though, the observatory is a stand-out being unbombed. Now I remember going pass it during the commencing battle from before.

We kept on running unopposed. Not even Aerostats were patrolling. We made it up to the rather clean and unscathed wall of the building and still nothing has countered our advances. Wonder what we are going to encounter now that I hear a whirring sound stirring inside.

Enter the observatory, nothing in the lobby. Every building is suppose to have some resistance from machines. It has been the universal word of warning when approaching a unmanned building that it's surely occupied by machines. The likelihood varies depending on the setting. In the country, it's near zip, but still with surprises, but in the midst of a battlefield, such as where we are, it is every building that has one. But no, there's been nothing in this observatory that the machines did their best to ignore it.

John Connor takes us to the elevator. Only eight of us can fit in it. John Connor and his two accompanying men, an engineer and a technician I figured out, were to go in and he ordered four others to join.

"...Including you, Sergeant Reese." Like the most important was meant to be saved for announcement last.

What is it about me that he's so drawn to? Why has he been such of interest in me? I can take it I'm going to find out.

The elevator makes it descent. "Didn't care to say good-bye to the rest of your friends?" What did he mean by that?

Elevator stops, and the 'ping' comes, followed by opening doors; still nothing. But I feel a strong sense of static and electric current, that's faintly tingling my nervous system. Up ahead there is a long corridor, no doors except on the other end of the hall one hundred meters down.

We approach slowly, gazing at the light flickering through the little windows.

It was dead quite, minus our footsteps, till the next second. Lightning scratches the air like nails on chalk. The halls were very converse with lights from the door windows and shadows of the dark interior, being either electric blue or abyssal black.

Going through the corridors, we're finally at the gates leading to the Time-Displacement Equipment. The eyes squint when they couldn't adjust when we went into the storage area of the warehouse where we saw what was like a giant blue sun, bright enough to actually be white and see no blue.

Lightning bolts crack and strike all around, hot air blown at our faces, we are like blind and deaf men trying to be soldiers 'at-the-ready'.

The only thing other than the blinding white was a thin black blur of a human figure, almost lost by how the intensity of the light overlaps whatever was standing there.

It walked deeper into the core and it disappeared. Then, more significantly, the ball of light and lightning disappeared as well.

The intensity of the darkness of the night filling in the intake of your eyes was like cold hands dunked in hot water. Agonizing blisters are on the outside by invading warmth while still bone-cold at the core. It hurts now to see the dark.

Eventual recovery from the out-of-the-ordinary situation finally gets us back to 'normal', but with an increasing growth of more disorientation trying to figure out what's at stake here; along with my feelings for legend and his mother. John Connor on the other hand, than any of us, knows exactly what needs to be done. He orders his technician and engineer to reboot the thing.

"Gentlemen, you know what had has been done and needs to be done."

His two men jump into action and get the machine up and running again. I curiously looked at this 'time' machine. Charges are being set, power is accelerating back to near apex power, settings have loads of numbers, one being a date set for 1984.

John Connor turned towards the rest of us. _Sigh_. Towards me, to be more specific. I feel another confusing moment coming. I don't need more confusion, I need to been given any answers at all.

He said what the objective is; he knew the objective because he said it already happened.

John Connor lays it all out, "That thing was a T-800. It's the perfect infiltration unit. We know how to find them, tell them apart from human, and know how to beat them. But not for us back then. It's sent to 1984 where all oblivious humans will take 'it' as one of their own. With that objective of covertness accomplished, unchallenged and even if so, repelled with ease, will too easily kill the outcome of humanity.'

'Straight to the point: the T-800 will undo all your deeds in combat, even your lives, undo everything that was to bring humanity up from the ashes after Judgment Day, by making me never to have existed through my mother. It's sent to kill Sarah Connor."

It would feel like a basic description of the next mission to the awaiting soldiers, but what I felt was as if my questions were answered indirectly, yet directly, to where I feel an untangling sense of relief of my inner self.

There is such thing as time travel. And this Terminator is planning to kill Sarah. It already happened in 1984, so would it mean it's not going to succeed? No it wouldn't, because if we are going in to stop it I'm going with them. Wait, so I existed in a time before I was born? Me being in the past had left an indent on me before I was born? If I'm going to the past, then I'm going to see Sarah Connor. She'll be in trouble, no can protect her, as she surely couldn't protect herself, from that metal monster.

We have to help her. _I _have to help her.

John Connor said that one of us is suppose to back to 1984 to defend Sarah Connor. And asked who was willing. A constant war never allowed me to give a thought about time travel, but here am I, possibly going to experience it first hand.

I want to meet her. Now. I want to meet Sarah Connor. I have to bring the conclusion of my feelings for her. Is it destiny repeating? Stop thinking, start acting.

Impulse made me yell, "I will!"

Being the first, I inspired others to volunteer. John Connor said, "This is only for one man, only one can go through." I have to go by myself? I need my comrades with me. It takes 3 men to outwit and outgun one and I have to fight this one alone? Well, I will need room and alone time. For what? Sarah Connor?

John Connor led me from the group. He seems to want to tell me personal, something he couldn't tell anyone else. "Tell her this: Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist."

My mind was whirling to memorize it. I must tell her this.

Connor and I were staring eye to eye. Why do I feel ancient when we look at each other? I feel 30 years older rather than 25 years younger.

"You lost the photo, didn't you?"

I body went cold with dread of worry. That photo would've meant as much to him as it did to me. Does a love between you and you mother equal to that of incomprehensible love between two people who never even knew each other?

I nodded yes. He seems accepting over the fact. "Still feel for her?" I didn't make a response, I stared back to understand what did he mean by that. It seems that he knew the effect it had on me. He did plan it, but to what avail?

"I know because its destiny already accomplished. I just need to set it up to replay itself again."

An unpredicted sense of confirmation of what's been vague and confusing, clouded by the cosmos that work beyond human understanding, is continuing to wash over me becoming a penetrating light of clarity. This has likely never occurred to any human being in existence, so how could one like me comprehend with this extreme of 'Eternal Love' that humanity has never atoned to?

"You'll have to take your clothes off. No dead matter can go. Sorry, but that means no weapons either." The operator says.

Great, so not only am I lacking man power that's need to fight it, I'll lack firepower. Could I even scratch the inner metal of that cyborg with last century weapons? This is embarrassing to take my clothes off, and it's cold.

Despite my blushing in embarrassment I feel a sense of approaching destiny wash over that feeling as I enter the machine.

John Connor approach with "Help her or I won't exist, through you...."

John Connor stopped and looked like he was wondering, whether or not to continue on something. It's a look I've seen in the horrors of the war, the look of man going to tell you want happened to your friend or brother but couldn't or if they did, could only say so much. It's another astounding look that reminds me just how human the legendary figure really is. That just makes them more fascinating. He backs me up so I'm in the center to be displaced, nods to the engineers and the machines start to whir.

That much has happened since he stopped that I almost failed to catch it. He turns his head and walks away and mutters something but caught my ear like God's voice.

"...father."

For what a regular person would call the most out of place word in their lives is the one that made the most sense to my feelings. That was the answer to my feelings. The last lock has been broken, the last knot untied, the last stain of the window been cleaned. It was all of these feelings of release.

I look a John Connor in a new light, a greater light. He's not a figure of legend, greater than man, such things man dream of being is of no matter of why I'm...proud of him. He's my boy, my son. Being the savior of mankind, or not, I feel proud for him as my son. Age seems to come at me at my soul again. I'm ancient. I stare all teary eyed at John Connor; I can't make out how he's looking at me through my watered eyes.

The strobes of light come on me like spot light with the intensity of the sun. Whirring, electricity, lights, my heart and body accelerate nearly to the climax.

I know now what to do. Does it also mean I know what to say to myself now? I know who I am. What my purpose is. Who is my destiny.

Despite the loss of the photo, the memory is just as strong, if not stronger, and undissolving. I know that though I'm behind the Terminator who went first, I'm truly ahead of it and Skynet. For I know her more by heart, face, and soul than data from the extraordinary mind in cyberspace, Skynet, will ever know.

That's the vital step that John Connor gave and knew it will provide.

When the lighting vaporized me, it felt like my body was torn apart, but I feel released and more awake than ever. I guess this is what death would feel like.

A warm, fuzzy feeling enveloped me. Though my body is gone, I still gave a sigh for it was for my spirit. It feels that after suffering for so long physically, it's rewarded by death freeing from the confines of the body.

_I must be in heaven. _Then the reverse happened.

_Light, cold, like being reborn..._

* * *

**A/N(Sometime ago):** Oh, my God, it's finally finished. I took as a pleasure at first, but the more I try to give depth to Kyle Reese's feelings, it turns wordy rather than emotional. My progress was reduced snail paced. I only feel like writing 1 day out of 2 weeks. All too only get half of a mesh-mash paragraph.

Then, later on in August last year, I got the gear going. Not much, but far significant progress with more appreciated results. There will probably be a very noticeable change in tone in the 2nd half. Then I went dead again, got rebooted, dead again, and again rebooted. I need to improve my self-motivation to stick to things from beginning to end.

**Find any mistakes? Nothing starts to make sense? I find it hugely redundant, overly analyzed, just exhausting to where I hardly care now. I guess it could be loved by others even if the creator isn't pleased. **

It's so hard to write something that humans have never experienced, let alone me. A previous existence that's only made possible by a future event. To have fallen in love with someone in the past that's actually in the future. Imagine if when you still have yet to get there in the future in order to travel to that past.

_Sarah Connor_ - _"God, a person can go insane just thinking about it."_ I've busted a few nerves to try to comprehend it to writing.

**A/N(01/01/10):** To those who've read it before, what do you think of this version? Makes more sense? Covers more ground and explains it better now? I just wanted it finished. I didn't care then, but revisiting it with a fresh mind has given it a new breath of life. Though eventually that dragged as well.

**P.S.** I'm not sure whether you not you listen to music or not when you read, but when ever I write this and think of it's theme, I think of _Memento Soundtrack's Main Theme. _It hits that spiritual yearning of understanding and search of truth and purpose that I think is what my story features also. _Memento _also had the riveting, awe-inspiring way of approaching quite basic feelings such as confusion, revenge, and lose but take such a magnificent angle of approach to the rarely encountered dimensions of our mind and soul. In my one-shot, "The Photo", it's theme is love but occurring in such a odd way that the human mind can't coupe with regularly. Kyle Reese was in love with Sarah Connor back in 1984 while 40 years later he still wasn't sent. That kind of situation has 'likely' never occurred to any human soul ever, it was that frustrating to convey it. Listen to it on YouTube or something when you read again, if you want to.


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